Of course, you might want to discuss it with the scientists and scholars themselves. To that end, comments will be allowed on selected articles. All comments are held for moderation. The debate over evolution and intelligent design attracts all kinds, including those who detract from the conversation by their obnoxious behavior. In order to maintain a higher level of discourse, we will not publish comments that use foul language, ad hominem attacks, threats, or are otherwise uncivil.

Emphasis in the original.

Having looked through the top 5 articles, I have not found one with comments allowed. We shall see.

If I had an irony meter, it might have hit elevenses on that one. Can these yoiks possibly manage to avoid an own-goal with this stuff? Or are the deafened by the sound of so many points whizzing over their heads?

The MadPanda, FCD

--------------"No matter how ridiculous the internet tough guy, a thorough mocking is more effective than a swift kick to the gentleman vegetables with a hobnailed boot" --Louis

Casey Luskin doesn't like it that the Elsberry and Shallit 2003 essay got edited and published in Synthese. Casey says it is "extremely out-of-date". Casey has evidence! Follow his link to a list of "peer-reviewed papers [published] in recent years", Casey says!

I'd like to leave a comment for Casey. But EN&V hasn't seen fit to open comments on Casey's rant.

Casey Luskin doesn't like it that the Elsberry and Shallit 2003 essay got edited and published in Synthese. Casey says it is "extremely out-of-date". Casey has evidence! Follow his link to a list of "peer-reviewed papers [published] in recent years", Casey says!

I'd like to leave a comment for Casey. But EN&V hasn't seen fit to open comments on Casey's rant.

At this point, just finding a thread at EN&V with open comments will have to count for something. It looks like nobody wants to go first.

You can comment on the the post on Flannery's book on Wallace (currently 16 comments, two by Luskin, another two by O'Leary). Comments are moderated. Other threads including the one on Synthese still don't allow comments.

All comments are held for moderation. The debate over evolution and intelligent design attracts all kinds, including those who detract from the conversation by their obnoxious behavior. In order to maintain a higher level of discourse, we will not publish comments that use foul language, ad hominem attacks, threats, or are otherwise uncivil.

--------------"[...] the type of information we find in living systems is beyond the creative means of purely material processes [...] Who or what is such an ultimate source of information? [...] from a theistic perspective, such an information source would presumably have to be God."

You can comment on the the post on Flannery's book on Wallace (currently 16 comments, two by Luskin, another two by O'Leary). Comments are moderated. Other threads including the one on Synthese still don't allow comments.

All comments are held for moderation. The debate over evolution and intelligent design attracts all kinds, including those who detract from the conversation by their obnoxious behavior. In order to maintain a higher level of discourse, we will not publish comments that use foul language, ad hominem attacks, threats, or are otherwise uncivil.

I have posted the following. Let's see if it appears:

Quote

"It all sounds impressive until Pinker tries to actually make a case for any of this. The narrative quickly degenerates into a trivial recounting of what humans currently do and then into a collection of speculative scenarios about how certain primordial hominids "might have" done this or "perhaps" did that."

Wallace's claim too may be characterized as a recounting of what humans currently do coupled with the assertion that these capabilities cannot have arisen by gradations. The argument for this assertion inheres in characterizations of these activities, e.g. their level of abstraction, and the follow-on claim that lesser forms of such capabilities cannot have been useful to our hominid ancestors, and therefore cannot have arisen step-wise. This is a conceptual argument, not an empirical one - which is why it is characterized as a "paradox."

When a conceptual claim is made, a conceptual response may be sufficient to dispute that claim. Wallace - and now ID proponents - argue not that these things did not happen (broadly an empirical claim), but that they cannot have happened - that to assert otherwise is to invoke a paradox (a conceptual claim). To refute an argument of this kind all one need only show that such events can have happened - that the claim is not in fact paradoxical. That is the level of Pinker's argument (as you summarize it here). Qualifiers such as "may have been," "may serve as," "perhaps," "may connect" are appropriate when mounting a conceptual response to a conceptual claim.

That response alone does not amount to science (nor is Wallace's claim science), nor does it follow from the argument that events can have happened that they did indeed happen. The science lies in the very hard work of formulating hypotheses regarding human cognitive evolution that are testable - a difficult proposition given that the hypothesized cognitive attainments occurred tens of thousands to millions of years in the past, and by their very nature can have left no physical traces other than cultural artifacts. The most interesting work in this field, which is far from new, draws not just upon characterizations of the skills in question but also upon predictions arising from a "triangulation" between findings in cognitive science, primatology, and human developmental psychology (ie. the unfolding of cognitive abilities in individual children). Perhaps we can never attain a high level of confidence regarding particular hypotheses. But a conceptual response alone can refute the bare conceptual claim that such hypotheses cannot be correct.

--------------Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."- David Foster Wallace

"Hereâ€™s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."- Barry Arrington

Of course this comment by Egnor follows his venom-laced rant on how the pejorative use of "Darwinist" is justified because it pisses off the atheistic biologists. I don't suppose "IDiot" would be likewise justified?

--------------The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny is alleviated by their lack of consistency. -A. Einstein (H/T, JAD)
If evolution is true, you could not know that it's true because your brain is nothing but chemicals. ?Think about that. -K. Hovind

Of course this comment by Egnor follows his venom-laced rant on how the pejorative use of "Darwinist" is justified because it pisses off the atheistic biologists. I don't suppose "IDiot" would be likewise justified?

From their comment policy

Quote

In order to maintain a higher level of discourse, we willnot publish comments that use foul language, ad hominem attacks, threats, or are otherwise uncivil.

I guess the egnoramus comments are considered civil, and not ad hominem. But I imagine that if someone opined that ID proponentsist comments contained "venom", such a comment would never be allowed.

--------------Flesh of the sky, child of the sky, the mindHas been obligated from the beginningTo create an ordered universeAs the only possible proof of its own inheritance. - Pattiann Rogers

"Pinker is invoking the “cognitive niche” as an explanatory mechanism for the human mind, and as such it is surely reasonable to expect some empirical evidence on its behalf"

I agree. As I stated below, "That response alone does not amount to science (nor is Wallace's claim science), nor does it follow from the argument that events can have happened that they did indeed happen. The science lies in the very hard work of formulating hypotheses regarding human cognitive evolution that are testable."

As I also stated below, some extremely interesting work is being done on these very difficult questions, for example at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and by researchers such as Tomasello, Call, Povinelli, Hare, and many others. Hard won specific, testable hypotheses regarding the nature and evolution of primate theory of mind (a pillar in the foundation of human cognition) are being addressed through thoroughly experimental means (see Brian Hare's elegant work on the distribution among primates of an understanding that one's conspecifics 'see' and act upon what they have seen). The results have unmistakeable importance for the evolution of social-cognitive intelligence and the foundations of many of the human capabilities we both admire. Further, the cross-fertilized work in developmental psychology stimulated by this perspective has yielded significant, unexpected discoveries regarding the unfolding of human cognition in infants, empirical findings that have unmistakable relevance to our understanding of human cognitive evolution. Whether or not you find that work "convincing," a large community of primatologists, developmental psychologists and cognitive scientists find it a fertile, productive and progressive area of empirical research, a framework that guides research in a way that has yielded important discoveries and posed additional researchable questions. I find it wholly inaccurate to characterize this work as "hand waving and hedges."Any reader who wishes may begin to judge for themselves by visiting

"Wallace never argued that humans couldn’t acquire higher mental attributes by means of natural selection, he simply said that such an argument lacked evidence"

At the outset you quote, approvingly I gather, Wallace as characterizing the distance between human beings and other species as "unbridgeable," and that "nothing in evolution can account for the soul of man" (my emphasis). That statement precisely is a claim that human beings can't have acquired higher mental attributes by means of evolutionary mechanisms, and not an assertion regarding the evidence.

Of course, this again is a wholly conceptual claim, one that assumes it's conclusion. And, once again, it is a claim that "humans couldn’t acquire higher mental attributes by means of natural selection," a argument you say Wallace never made.

Moreover, these abilities are at bottom elaborations of the powerful human capacity for representation, both as displayed by individuals and as deployed through the shared "distributed cognition" that characterizes our way of making a living. The capacious representational abilities that characterize human cognition have everything to do with the "survival needs" associated with the way human beings have made their living throughout their history. To say otherwise is tantamount to asserting that flight can't have evolved in birds because flight has nothing to do with basic survival needs.

That said, all of these skills have been hugely elaborated by means of cultural rather than biological evolution over the past several tens of thousands of years, and therefore do have many elaborate characteristics that are traceable to processes other than natural selection.

"The observational and experiential power of Wallace’s position is underestimated."

Ultimately, again, the science lies in the very hard work of generating testable hypotheses concerning the origins of these abilities and devising empirical research (both experimental and field) capable of answering the questions posed. It is the experimental power of Wallace's ideas - or rather the lack of same - that should concern its advocates.

--------------Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."- David Foster Wallace

"Hereâ€™s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."- Barry Arrington

Hmm... Casey Luskin has put a new post up criticising the DI's latest favourite bogeyman, Stephen Hawking. (He complains about Hawking using fallacious logic - oh the ironing.) It ends with a question...

Quote

What else would you expect from the guy that said "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing"?

...but, oddly, Casey has not enabled comments to allow for any answers. Didn't he once say the no comments policy was not his idea? What to make of this?

--------------To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. - Isaac Asimov

I forgot to crosspost a comment I submitted to Nelson's OD II post which has been in moderation going on 24 hours now. (I guess nobody scans submissions on the weekends). I asked why Nelson decided to use "natural selection" as shorthand for the theory of [neo-Darwinian] evolution. I pointed out that such use makes it difficult to determine whether each of his arguments is referring to the process of NS or to the theory of evolution as a whole. I asked for clarification. Maybe I should have added "please with sugar on top"